Melbourne CBD terror attack a 'wake-up call', Australian police say

Bill Shorten also paid tribute to Sisto Malaspina earlier today. He said he had spoken to him as recently as last Monday. Pellegrini’s proximity to the Victorian parliament meant he was well known to the city’s politicians.

It was a good day to come into town, it was Cup weekend, it wasn’t very busy. He served up a freshly baked almond cake. And he was always good for a chat about politics and Melbourne. It’s tragic when anyone’s killed, it brings it home in a particularly strong way when you know the person who has been killed. And I think many Melbournians will be experiencing that sense of unreality. He’s a Melbourne icon. I know we use the word icon perhaps a bit easily or bit casually, but he and Pellegrini’s and the staff and the people who’ve run that place since the mid-70s are part of Melbourne life. In my lifetime they’ve been there forever. I can’t imagine the random misfortune which will put him in the path of this evil wrongdoer.

On Friday’s attack itself, Shorten said:

We need to be ruthless and relentless against people who are going to commit this sort of violence and whatever twisted, perverse definition of religion or ideology makes them do this.

What we know so far

Sisto Malaspina, the co-owner of the popular Melbourne Italian cafe Pellegrini’s was killed after Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, 30,went on the rampage in Bourke Street in Melbourne’s city centre on Friday afternoon.

Police shot Shire Ali and he was taken to hospital under guard, but died shortly afterwards.

Police are treating the attack as a terrorist incident. Shire Ali was known to counter-terrorism authorities at state and national level.

Shire Ali’s passport had been cancelled in 2015 when Asio assessed he had intentions to travel to Syria to fight with Islamic State extremists.

Police have spoken with Shire Ali’s wife.

Authorities were not actively monitoring him before the incident.

Joint counter-terrorism investigators were raiding two addresses in Werribee and Meadows Heights on Saturday morning.

Shire Ali had a history of minor drug, theft and driving offences. He had migrated from Somalia to Australia in the 1990s, police said.

Shire Ali drove a 4x4 laden with gas cylinders. Witnesses said the man drove the vehicle outside the Target centre about 4.20pm. As the car went up in flames, he attempted to stab people and fought with police and bystanders.

The police officer who shot the man in the chest, had been out of the police academy for three months.

Islamic State has claimed the attack, and police say Shire Ali had links to Isis

The police presence in the city and at major events such as the Flemington races and remembrance day services has been stepped up.

The opposition leader, Matthew Guy, held a media conference earlier today. Victoria goes to the polls on 24 November.

Guy again emphasised his claim that “there should be no moral squeamish” or “white flags” about Friday’s incident. He would not be drawn on whether he was criticising the government.

“Victorians want to know that these kinds of atrocities won’t happen again and those in power will do everything they can to ensure they don’t happen again,” he said.

Commenting generally and not on the Bourke Street attack, he said that repeat violent offenders should face mandatory minimum jail time and those who were “not an Australian citizen ... should be deported”.

Asked what he meant by “moral squeamishness”, Guy said: “I think moral squeamishness is where we make … and I’ve seen plenty of excuses made for people who break laws rather than protecting those who uphold them.”

Pressed on whether he was criticising the premier, Daniel Andrews, Guy said he was “not here to comment on others, I’m saying this is my point of view … as a lifelong Melburnian”.

Further pressed, he told reporters gathered: “You can draw any implication you want, my words are very clear today.”

Andrews yesterday offered his condolences to all affected and said “we will not be defined by this.”

A steady stream of mourners has came to pay their respects to Sisto Malaspina.

Brendan Nottle, the Salvation Army major has been providing services for Melbourne’s homeless at a building across the road from Pellegrini’s for about 20 years.

Nottle was down at Bourke Street after the attack on Friday helping to comfort witnesses. “We were down there when it happened for four or five hours, just handing out coffee and food and trying make sense of it, then when you find out it’s someone like Sisto, then it makes even less sense,” Nottle said.

He described Malaspina as a “big personality”. When Nottle would walk in, Malaspina would greet him with a high-five and call him the “professor”.

“We’d cross paths either in here (Pellegrini’s), and he was quite theatrical, or going across the road to get a newspaper at the newsagents,” Nottle said.

“We had a number of AFL footballers who’d help us with our work and we’d bring them in here. He’d always have a chat and tell them how good Essendon was.”

John Richardson has come to Pellegrini’s with his two daughters twice a year since they were born. His parents also had their first date there in the 1950s.

“Pellegrini’s is an institution,” said Richardson, who left a bunch of flowers on the doorstop on Saturday afternoon.

“When my two kids were born over at the Mercy Hospital, I was in in the evenings and they’d sent me off to have something to eat. I came here to have dinner by myself. I’ve come here every birthday with my daughters since then, and they’re 15 and 17.”

Of Malaspina, Richardson said: “He was very warm, welcoming. He was full of life. You walked in and the place was always buzzing.”

Melbourne: what we know so far about the Bourke Street attack

Police have said the attacker Hassan Khalif Shire Ali had his passport cancelled in 2015 because he wanted to fight for Islamic State in Syria, writes our reporter, Lisa Martin. You can read her full story below:

The man who was killed after stabbing a passerby to death and injuring two others in Melbourne had his passport cancelled in 2015 because he wanted to fight for Islamic State in Syria.

But despite being known to the police and intelligence agencies, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, 30, was not being actively monitored before Friday afternoon’s Bourke Street attack.

Shire Ali, drove a 4x4 vehicle loaded with gas bottles into the city centre, ignited the vehicle into a ball of flames and then attacked passers-by with a knife.

Joint counter-terrorism investigators were conducting raids at two homes of relatives of the attacker in Werribee and Meadows Heights on Saturday morning.

Australian Federal Police acting deputy commissioner Ian McCartney said the terrorism threat had been mitigated and it was limited to the lone attacker.

Authorities cancelled Shire Ali’s passport in 2015 when the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation assessed that he was planning to travel to Syria to fight with Isis extremists, McCartney said.

“The assessment was made that while he held radicalised views he did not pose a threat in relation to national security,” McCartney said.

“The event yesterday for us is a reality check, even with the fall of the [Isis caliphate in Iraq and Syria)]”.

Victorian police chief commissioner Graham Ashton praised the efforts of the two police officers who confronted Shire Ali and said they were receiving emotional support.

The officer who shot him had been out of the police academy just three months ago.

Shire Ali had a history of minor drug, theft and driving offences, lived in Melbourne’s north-western suburbs and came to Australia from Somalia in the 1990s, Ashton said.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said that while he would be the first to protect religious freedom in this country, religious extremism needed to be called out.

“There is a special responsibility on religious leaders to protect their religious communities and to ensure that dangerous teachings and ideologies do not take root here,” he told reporters in Sydney.

Morrison is expected to travel to Canberra for security briefings on Sunday afternoon.

Sisto Malaspina - a lovely man - was murdered by a Somali-Australian our country gave refuge to. Violence on our streets must end, and it must never be excused. I will never accept violent extremism as a part of modern Australian life. pic.twitter.com/GsAEEVXbUq

I am devastated. I’ve known Sisto’s smiling, beautiful face all my life. My first coffee, my first date, my Melbourne life. This man, this bar, this lane, this community is the heart of Melbourne - and it will always beat strong. #Sisto#Pellegrinishttps://t.co/kIcB0KhfNo

Oh no...Such terrible news!Many, many times spent in Pellegrinis with kind and welcoming Sisto behind the counter.Condolences to friends, family and yes, Melbourne.Youv'e lost a precious piece of your heart and soul.Sympathies. https://t.co/euXBwdxoU5

“I think it is fair to say he was inspired,” McCartney said. “He was radicalised.”

Asked how seriously police took Isis’s declaration of responsibility for the attack, Ashton said it was difficult to know at this stage.

He said the police had been in contact with Shire Ali’s wife.

Ashton was not ready to identify the victim, who we now know is Sisto Malaspina, owner of a popular Italian restaurant Pellegrini’s. That official confirmation is expected to come later today

Of the other two victims, Tasmanian man Rod Patterson and an as-yet unidentified Hampton Park security guard, the police commissioner said authorities believed they would recover and be out of hospital soon. They have had surgery at the Royal Melbourne hospital.

Ashton also said police had no information to suggest there were any additional threats present for coming events in Melbourne tonight, including an A-League match and a spring carnival race day at Flemington.

Capp, said Red Cross volunteers were roaming the streets of Melbourne to provide assistance.

Scott Morrison warns of threat from 'religious extremism'

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, also spoke to the media this morning.

Morrison said the efforts of emergency services workers, who tended not only to the victims but the attacker as well reminded “everyone what a decent, fair and humane people we are”.

He said Australians would be grieving for a “life tragically and violently taken”.

The prime minister has been in contact with police and intelligence agencies, as well as the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, and the state opposition leader, Matthew Guy, and has offered a briefing to the Labor leader, Bill Shorten.

Morrison closed his prepared remarks with a statement against “radical, violent extremist Islam that opposes our very way of life”, saying he needed to “call it out”.

He said it was the “greatest threat of religious extremism” in the country, and applauded those Muslims who were working to combat it.

I am the first to protect religious freedom in this country. But that also means I must be the first to call out religious extremism. Religious extremism takes many forms around the world and no religion is immune from it. That is the lesson of history and sadly modern history as well.

Friday’s attack came at a time when Victoria is in the midst of an election campaign. The Liberal leader, Matthew Guy, issued a statement on Saturday morning.

I do not, have not and never will accept that “violent extremism is part of contemporary Australia.

No Victorian or Australian should accept that.

I do not accept it as Opposition Leader and I would never accept it as Premier.

Victorians deserve and have a right to live in safety and while we can never be immune from the threat of terror, as yesterday’s events demonstrate, we should never accept it as part of our way of life.

Terrorism can be defeated, but never by accepting it as the normal part of life.